A four-woman group of Presque Isle High School students helped lead a march on the Maines State Capitol building in Augusta last week.

They went to Spar with state legislative democrats over three bills that would ban biological men from girls’ sports – a question that has sent their state and sports seasons that spiraled to chaos in 2025.

For three of them, it was their first political rally and they took the center. They had to wade through pro-transgender counter-protesting outside the building and dismissive liberal legislators inside it.

“It was a little scary to know that they don’t have the same beliefs as us,” Hailey Himes, a first time protests, told Pakinomist Digital.

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But Himes said she realized she had to take part in the fight to protect girls’ sports from trans athletes when her English teacher awarded her an essay on the subject on March 12.

Just a month before it was Hims and other female athletes witnessed the rod vault’s leap that threw their state into a national conflict when a trans -athlete won first place in girls’ polevel to Greely High School in early February.

“I saw this male pole -vaulter standing on the podium, and we were all like looking like we were like ‘we’re pretty sure it’s not a girl. There’s no way it’s a girl,'” said Himes. “It was really condescending, especially for the girls on the podium not in the first place. So it motivated me to fight for them.”

Then Himes along with her track and field teammates Lucy Cheney and Carrlyn Buck marched on Augusta, after the lead of colleague Presque Isle Track -Athlet Cassidy Carlisle, who has already participated in two marches in Augusta and trips to Washington, DC, to meet with GOP leaders on the question.

The group had gained plenty of experience dealing with controversy involving trans athlete close to the home for years together. Years earlier, the girls saw their high school shaken by a situation involving a trans athlete when a biological man joined the girls’ tennis team.

“We all heard about it from friends and none of us do tennis, so it was just a kind of mouth -to -mouth -to -mouth,” Cheney said. “At that time we couldn’t really do anything about it because the administration agreed to let them play, so we really just had to accept it, and really no one else on the team would really accept it, but they had to.”

Maine Girls’ Track and Field Athlete Lucy Cheney

All four girls added that it quickly became one of the most discussed topics in Presque Isle High School when it first happened, and it continued throughout the school years 2022-23 and 2023-24 before the trans athlete was trained last summer.

Now, this year, they have all had to compete in the shadow of a national conflict between their state and President Donald Trump, because Government Manager Janet Mills and the Democratic majority have committed to keep trans athletes in girls’ sports.

Mills’ attitude risks costing the state’s federal funding of colleges while leaving Carlisle, Himes, Cheney, Buck and their teammates facing the fear of competing against trans athletes in the state’s orbit and field endings.

Maine shaken by Trans athlete —Dominance on girls’ tracks meet in the middle of the ongoing legal conflict with Trump

When the four teenagers entered Capitol on Thursday, they came face to face with the people who struggled to keep trans athletes in their sports. The Maine -Laws Democratic majority has been actively and aggressively resisted the Trump administration for months over the president’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order.

But now three Republican-supported bills were 868, LD 233, and LD 1134-on their own floor to turn his policy, and over a dozen Maine High School girls athletes were there to fight the Democrats for it.

“They certainly asked much less questions to the people they did not agree with than the people they agreed with, and you could tell you that they did not feel compassionate,” Cheney said of the democratic leaders.

“They became emotional right when [pro-trans speakers] Shared, and it looked like they really used to them and they wanted to support them, and it didn’t feel as much as they wanted to hear our side. ”

Buck said that when the Democrats came to them with questions, they thought “hostile.”

“They just seemed more hostile to our testimonies when they asked questions,” Buck said. “It felt as if many questions were plagued.”

Maine Girls’ Track and Field Athlete Carrlyn Buck

Still, teens made sure to let everyone in the chamber know what it was they had to do with when the trans athletes competing in Maines Freedom, threatening to Upend their entire season.

A transidentifying athlete competing for the North Yarmouth Academy in Yarmouth, Maine, recently dominated the girl’s 800 meters and 1600 meters of events at the Poland-Nya-Yarmouth Seacoast meeting, which got national indignation.

“For my teammates and some of my best friends on the team who are in the events with [the trans athletes]It’s really unfortunate for them, and just our team as a whole because these points will affect our team ranking, “Himes said, adding that another local girl suggested her parents won’t allow her to compete in the same event with a trans athlete.

Buck added, “It’s not just about points, it’s also that our teammates will feel discouraged when placed in an event against them because they already know that the result is decided to play against a biological man who is biologically stronger than them so they have no chance.”

Carlisle is already very familiar with the feeling of defeat, after losing for the same athlete who dominated the Poland-Nya-Yarmouth-Seacoast meeting in previous races and skiing competitions dating back to 2023. On top of, she first had to experience shifts in the same closet with a man in seventh grade when a trans student was in her gym class.

Maine Girl involved in Trans Athlete Battle reveals how state policies harm her childhood and sports career

Maine High Schools Cassidy Carlisle is running in a track event. (With permission from Cassidie ​​Carlisle)

But even now, as a rising crusader against trans -cluttering in girls’ sports, after participating in marches, meets with GOP attorneys General and even a press conference in the Department of Justice announcing a lawsuit against Maine on the question, she says she still has a friend who is transgender.

“I communicate almost on a daily basis, we never have negative interactions,” Carlisle said. “For people who would say we don’t accept, that’s not the problem. We don’t have a problem in general with transgender people. We have a problem when it begins to affect our lives.”

Carlisle has saved his resentment, not for transgender people or even the trans athletes, but for mills.

“She looks at us directly and says” I don’t care about you, “said Carlisle.” When I vote next time, I will definitely take it into consideration. ”

“Our schools need federal funding,” Carlisle said. “So for [Mills]Now she doesn’t just look at Maine Girl -Athletes and Say ‘I don’t care about you.’ She looks at students in Maine and says ‘I don’t care about you and I don’t care if your school gets financing because I want to choose a match that really doesn’t have to be chosen.’ ”

DOJ has accused the state “open and defiant whistling federal law on discrimination by enforcing policies that require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions who are exclusively appointed for girls,” according to a complaint obtained by Pakinomist Digital.

Mills, Maine Department of Education and Maine Principals ‘Association have held on to support to continue to enable trans -cluttering in girls’ sports throughout the state, citing Maine Human Rights ACT as a precedent to determine gender eligibility.

Meanwhile, two Maine school districts have already taken the cases in their own hands, as MSAD # 70 and RSU # 24 each have moved to change their own policies to keep trans athletes out of girls’ sports.

Presque Isle High School Girls’ Athletes from Left, Carrlyn Buck, Hailey Himes, Cassidy Carlisle and Lucy Cheney. (Pakinomist Digital)

And in addition to these school districts and young women like Carlisle, Buck, Himes and Cheyney, Mills and Democrats can eventually end up with more internal resistance than external.

ONE Examination of The coalition of the American parents found that out of approx. 600 registered Maine voters said 63% that school sports participation should be based on biological sex, and 66% agreed that it is “only fair to limit women’s sports to biological women.”

The survey also found that 60% of residents would support a ballot limiting participation in Women’s and girls’ sports to Biological Women. This included 64% of the independent and 66% of parents with children under the age of 18.

But so far, the governor has remained firm in opposing Trump on the issue, even at the expense of taxpayer-funded legal fees.

“I am happy to go to court and litigation the questions raised in this law complaint,” Mills told journalists in April.